Adopted Talent
by WerewolvesAreReal
Summary: Sylar never set out to be a murderer, not at first. He just wanted to be... special. WARNINGS for murder and attempted suicide, nongraphic.


**So, I'm not directly looking at the word-for-word conversations from referenced episodes, but I pretty much watched the entire series over a four-day period this week. So it should be decent. Apologize for any errors; I proofread it, of course, but my new kitten was sort of marching over the laptop at the time, soo... we'll see how that worked out. **

**For anyone curious, I just got this new laptop and started writing again today, so hopefully I should have the new chapter of 'We All Fall Down' done soon.**

**Motive for this story? I was reading a Heroes fic, 'Speed dial No. 2', and the author recommended using a fortune cookie generator for fic prompts. Surprisingly good results! Or maybe I just lucked out with the prompt, yes? Although I might have taken it a little literally, ha. You'll see what I mean.**

**(But _how did this become so long_, oh my god. It was supposed to be, like, a drabble.)**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Heroes, nor any of the characters, ideas, concepts, or materials therein.**

* * *

Gabriel Gray is not a violent person.

Anyone who knows him would laugh at the very notion. Granted, that basically means his mother and father, but nevertheless. Gabriel is a watchmaker, and accedes to every possible stereotype one would imagine, besides age. He is quiet, scrupulously clean, and isolated – _lonely_, his mind whispers some nights, but that thought is quickly snuffed and pushed to a dark, cobwebbed corner of the mind to be ignored. After all, why should he complain? He has a steady job, is his own boss. He wakes up early, puts on his neat, thin glass, and diligently attends to watches with absorbed intent. He likes watches, even; the elegant intricacies of every gear and coil and spring, the light sheen of metal, the history of antique grandfather clocks and scuffed pocket-watches. His mind fits each component together internally, perfectly. When he returns to his dark, bare apartment each night he is surrounded by the low, even _tick, tick _of a dozen perfectly timed clocks, swinging in perfect unison, the most beautiful symphony in the world. Gabriel loves his job. Isn't that a good thing?

But sometimes, despite his own contentment, doubts emerge, wafting up from some dark corner of the mind, a dozen sickly-sweet comments of a recent childhood.

_"You're so bright, Gabriel! Such potential," _his mother would coo. _"You could be a lawyer, you know..."_

A lawyer, a doctor, a detective – hell, an astronaut or physicist or even the fucking president. His mother's plan for Gabriel's future seemed to change weekly in his childhood. But the position of 'watchmaker' was never even mentioned.

His father let Gabriel help, increasingly so when it became clear that Gabriel's innate talent in repairwork far outstripped his father's. That made his mother happy, too, at least at first. _"Look at your hands!" _She'd cried. _"You could be an inventor. An engineer. Such steady hands!"_

But what was wrong with watches?

* * *

When Chandra Suresh approaches Gabriel, and tells him about his DNA, tells him that he is _special, _he is thrilled.

'Patient Zero', Suresh calls him. They spend long days trying to find some validation in Suresh's theory, some proof that Gabriel's genetic markers indicate some superhuman gift. Suresh holds up card after card of images, but Gabriel cannot guess them; he is not clairvoyant, not telepathic. He tries to move objects with his mind; a failure. He shows no affinity, in fact, for... well, anything. Like always, only the watches speak to him.

Dr. Suresh... declares him a failure. And that, as they say, is that.

But not if Gabriel can help it.

* * *

Gabriel had always been an overachiever.

In school he paid full attention in every class, and from youth he rejected company in favor of returning home to work, work, work. His mother would beam with pride to see him sitting at the kitchen table with his books spread out around him, making clucking comments about how special, how wonderful, how genius he would be. _Cerebral, _that was her favorite word, her son was _cerebral _and an _academic_ and destined for great things.

When Gabriel reached high school, his routine stayed the same. The difference, of course, was that he was no longer invited to anything, and no one typically spoke to him. He was not ill-treated; he was simply a permanent, silent fixture, glanced at and then dismissed. People started with surprise whenever he spoke; one person in his literature class, at hearing Gabriel contribute to a discussion on _How to Kill a Mockingbird, _whipped around and exclaimed, "Holy hell, I thought you were mute!"

And it was all for nothing.

Gabriel graduated at the rank of 29 of 214 in his graduating class. Not bad. But not _exceptional_. He stared at the front row of students, the smiling, bouncing valedictorian who waved fiercely to her boyfriend as she proudly walked the stage, the swaggering saunter of the salutatorian, who captained the football team and received practically a standing ovation. What did they have that Gabriel didn't?

What was wrong with him?

* * *

He gets the name Brian Davis from Suresh's files, and convinces the man to make a call to his shop. And Brian is very clearly _not _a failure; he's telekinetic.

Gabriel watches as Brian makes objects swerve around the room, and feels a surge of envy shoot through him. Well. So he is not special, after all. But this Brian is, and Chandra Suresh will study him now, and Gabriel will just be... well... Gabriel. Gabriel the watchmaker. Not Gabriel-the-president, not Gabriel-the-doctor, not even Gabriel-the-psychic, just... Gabriel. The watchmaker. Forgotten.

"So you can help?" Brian whispers. "You can make it go away?"

And the world stills.

Gabriel's pulse thuds in his ears. This man has a gift, an amazing gift. He is special without even trying, without doing _anything, _and he just – he wants it gone?

_Why?_

And then... he knows.

He _sees _it, almost, how this man's power works. It's like looking at a watch, but... incomplete. There are pieces he cannot yet see. Hidden pieces. But there is a simple solution to that.

"You're broken," he says, distantly. Broken, broken, broken for _not wanting this. _And Gabriel can fix it.

It isn't murder. It's survival of the fittest. An evolutionary imperative to gain power. Brian is broken. He is dead. And Gabriel is whole, so he grows strong.

This makes sense when he raises the crystal to bring it crashing down onto Brian's turned head. Later, staring at his bloody hands and the red-dyed floor, staring at the pink-shining brain he's examined so thoroughly, it's a little harder to defend.

* * *

Gabriel always knew there was something odd about him.

It started as a child, just nine years old. He was in the sitting room with his father, laboriously trudging through _Of Mice and Men, _sounding out each word, wrapping them around his tongue with feather-light care. Gabriel loved to read, but words didn't come to him easily. Not then.

_Guys don't need no sense to be a nice fella. Seems to me sometimes it jus' works the other way around. Take a real smart guy and he ain't hardly ever a nice fella._

"Damn it!" Martin Gray swore. Gabriel jumped, then looked up with surprise. "Fuckin' hell, there's no fixing that trash."

He threw the delicate silver watch, angrily, and it clattered against the opposite wall with a tinkle of loose metal.

Martin brooded, fuming. Gabriel hesitated. His father was not violent, but neither was he pleasant. Gabriel liked watches, though, and the one Martin threw looked expensive and neat and rare, so he dog-eared the book and rose.

Martin misinterpreted the movement. "What? You think _you _can fix it? You think because I showed you how to set the time you're an _expert, _brat?"

Gabriel flinched. If his mother were there she would have scolded Martin Gray, in that absent, indulgent way she had of trivializing everything, and making everyone feel stupid and inferior and _angry _just through speech. But she was _not _there, and Gabriel was, so he wrapped his arms around himself, automatically, and tried for a scampering retreat.

"Hold it!" And a heavy hand latched onto his sleeve, dragging him back. Despite himself Gabriel's heart already pounded with embarrassment. He didn't know _why _he was embarrassed or ashamed or frightened, but Father had a way of doing that all the time, just like Mother trivialized him all the time. "_Go on, _try it. See what you can do. 'Ginia keeps saying you're a little smart-ass, figure it out."

_His ears heard more than was said to him, and his slow speech had overtones not of thought, but of understanding beyond thought._

Gabriel picked up the slim silver watch, and he stared, and stared, and stared, Martin's grip a vice around his arm.

It was silent, dead, making no sound. He turned it around, saw the pried-open back, the mangled mess of minute gears and cogs.

And something _clicked. _It was not an epiphany, but a revelation, pulling something deep within his essence and spinning a tendril of his soul around each delicate piece. They rose and slotted together before his eyes, a glowing map, a divine message. Every component had a perfect place, a necessary place that was right and sure and natural, and his fingers moved.

He pried the watch apart, piece by tiny piece, fitted it correctly, fitted it _whole, _and the last placing of the last gear was everything warm and homely he had every known, a closure to the grand mystery of creation. _This, _this was beauty, and he _clicked _on the back of the watch, listening to its dutiful, _perfectperfectperfect _tick-tick-tick, and he smiled.

Martin picked up the watch. Stared. "How the hell - " he started, then stopped. Speechless.

"...Well," Martin said. "...Well. Maybe you know something after all." A pause. "...Huh."

"I'd liked to make watches, Father," Gabriel blurted, and his heart _ached _for that gloriousglorious _rightness _to return. The memory was already becoming distant and faded and tragic; he would later weep in sheer remembrance. "I really would, I don't want to be a president or astronaut or anything, I just like watches."

"...Huh."

Martin was still just staring. And, as the silence became uncomfortable, the son wilted, drawing back again. "Can I come with you, tomorrow, Father?" Gabriel asked, in a small voice.

The elder Gray stared at his son with a distant absentness. "If you must," he said, bland but appraising, looking at the old watch speculatively. And Gabriel, arms curled around himself, smiled with innocent, heart-wrenching pleasure.

His father left, and Gabriel returned to his faded green chair, folding his knees under him and reaching for his worn book.

"Books ain't no good," Gabriel mouthed slowly, tracing every letter with his eyes. "A guy needs somebody – to be near him. A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody. Don't make no difference who the guy is, long he's with you. I tell ya, I tell ya a guy gets too lonely and he gets sick..."

* * *

Gabriel's favorite watch was not, technically, a watch at all.

It was called a 'clock watch', a true, bulky antique. Round like an egg, it hung heavily around his neck, a blunt, rusted lump of bronze metal. There was a rough, dented grill over the top instead of glass, and the steel-pinned movement scraped ceaselessly against the old covering. The 'watch' told time very poorly, only on the hour, and inconsistently at that; it had to be wound twice a day, and burned his skin in hot weather. The misshapen thing was inconvenient and tacky and tasteless, and Gabriel loved it.

It had _history. _It was a 'Nuremburg Egg', one of the first types of watches to ever be produced, and its convoluted, inexpert design only meant that its working was all the more intricate, more fascinating. It broke down easily, so Gabriel spent an hour a week lovingly shining it, oiling it, checking each archaic pin and wedge with sharp eyes. Some would dismiss the watch as a pain or a nuisance, or at the least relegate it to the position of paperweight, to serve as a conversation piece. But not Gabriel. He wore about a dozen other watches along his right forearm, all _tick-tick-ticking _in perfect chorus, but those were all replaceable. The clock-watch was the only one that mattered.

When Gabriel first purchased the watch, using saved money stockpiled from years of work and an utter lack of a social life, he thought of what his father might have said._ "That beast is ridiculous," _he would have jeered. _"You have a dozen nice quartz watches on your arm, why do you need that thing?"_

It's a little ridiculous to say that anyone is in the watch-making business for the money; Gabriel's father, before he'd abandoned Gabriel and Virginia, had repaired watches because it was all he knew. He came from a line of watch-makers, and it put bread on the table, and that was all. It was a job. It was not his life.

Maybe, then, after years of watching her tired husband trudging to his mundane, painstaking job, Virginia Gray could be forgiven for not desiring the same fate for her son.

Maybe.

"Good lord," she'd gasped, first seeing the monstrosity gracing her son's neck. Gabriel beamed, expecting gushing delight over the fantastic piece. "Are you _trying _to look homeless, sweetie? No one will hire you looking like that!"

Gabriel had blinked, faltered. "I – it's an old piece, mother, a Heinlein make from - "

"I don't care if the queen wore it, dear, but it's not _professional."_

An antique watch seemed perfectly professional for a watchmaker, at least to Gabriel. "But I am not looking for a job. I own a business."

Virginia Gray had sniffed, and went to inspect her snowglobe collection idly. "And with an attitude like that, dearie, you always will."

* * *

Disposing of a body is not as difficult as Gabriel would have guessed.

He wraps it thoroughly in a black garbage bag, then wraps that same bag a few times for comfort. The floor is bleached. He wipes the surroundings quickly for prints, then ditches the crystal formation that had been the initial murder weapon.

And that's it.

He actually keeps the body, dead and stinking, hidden in the back of his shop for two days. His heart beats off-tempo the whole while, and it's impossible to work on the watches, to access the perfectperfect sense of Belonging needed to fix them. He half-expects the police to break down his door any day, and feels half-resigned, half-relieved at the thought. But no one comes.

Finally, when a customer walks in and rudely comments on the smell, Gabriel decides that waiting more won't help. So he waits at the shop until night – hardly unusual for him – and sets out for the nearby woods, heart trembling in his chest the whole while.

Once out, he simply drags the body through the forest, aimlessly, feeling ready to retch the entire time. His choice of burial spot is necessity more than anything else; if he walks any farther he'll be sick.

Gabriel could bury the body quickly and painlessly with his new-found power, but he does not. He digs, not with a shovel but his bare hands, heaving out thimblefuls of dry dirt, then scraping desperately to grab dank clods of earth through bleeding, cracked fingers as the sun rises and lowers in the sky.

The resulting grave is not six feet deep, but it suffices, and he dumps the body in with a sort of solemn, morbid reverence.

Covering the body is quicker. The sun has vanished entirely; night is falling again, but there will be no moon visible this dusk, and somehow that is appropriate

Gabriel stares at the bare, vulnerable mound, feeling like some sort of voyeur. There has to be something to do, something to say, a closure. But what can he say? He killed this man. A eulogy would be wasted.

Finally, though, he understands.

He reaches up, with numb fingers, and pulls off his beloved clock-watch with practised hands. He turns it slowly, tracing every dent and scratch and memorized marring, and then drops it right in the center of the grave.

The _tick, tick, tick _of each watch on his arm pulses in his ears like a newborn heart. He turns from the grave, gazing at the sky; then, when he can resist no longer, he looks down.

The first watch on his arm is a new acquisition. A rare brand; a Sylar watch. Scarce, expensive. But somehow, in comparison to the clock-watch, hollow. Artificial. Dead. With a thought, he makes the hour hand turn and turn and turn, spinning clockwise until it meets the same position again. He breathes a slow, shaky breath, then straightens, and under the new moon he slowly trudges home.

He knows what needs to be done.

* * *

Gabriel is a proud person.

Not by choice, certainly. He feels many things are more important than pride; self-preservation, for one. But every move he takes, his mother's voice whispers at the back of his head, scolding or urging him on. She is not his conscious, but his haunting, his sense of pride and gluttony and sin, the snake in his ear. He wants to be good, but he wants more to please her, and sometimes the dichotomy is confusing.

He always considers his mother's opinion – _always. _But his mother had never voiced an opinion about suicide.

He winds the rope in the back of his shop. It isn't hard; Gabriel can always tell how things work, and the correct tying of a rope is much easier to set up than a watch. He tugs at the knots to check for tightness, and something in his chest squeezes.

He wants to kill again.

It's _wrongwrongwrong, _so different from the natural grace of fixing and repairing, but his telekinesis is addicting. God, there is so much he could learn. And there are other powers, too, and he _wants _them. He _hungers _for them, lusts for them, and – frankly, he realizes, he would do anything to get them.

_Anything._

So he can't. He obviously can't be allowed to live. If he does he will kill, and that is unacceptable; even Virginia Gray, in all her ambitious ramblings, had never advocated murder for power. He is inherently wrong _(Like the half-minute slow clicking of the sevlar watch on his table) _and there is only one way to fix himself.

He hangs the rope. Stands on a chair. Puts his head through. Kicks the chair away.

And the world darkens.

* * *

The Gray family had always been religious.

_If we confess our sins, _Virginia Gray would recite each night at the table, _he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness._

Gabriel had always thought the verse, and the concept, was silly. Some crimes were just too horrible to forgive. How could murderers and rapists ever go to Heaven? Just for confessing, just for praying? Yet all sorts of perfectly good people were not Christians – would they all go to Hell?

He never said this aloud, of course. His mother was very strict about blasphemy. But he stopped going to church once he left home.

It just didn't _fit, _you know?

* * *

When Gabriel falls from the broken rope, a lash of blue lightning searing the corner of his eyes, and looks up to a dark gaze and the most lovely face he has ever seen, what had happened becomes clear.

An angel had saved him.

And, alright. She says her name is Ellie, which doesn't sound very angelic, and she looks much more human once his brain is receiving an adequate supply of oxygen. But she is at least angel-sent, because she's saying everything he has ever wanted to hear.

_You're special just the way you are._

And then, while he sits at his apartment doing nothing more than stressing over the future, who shows up at his door but Ellie? And with peach pie, too. It's a sign.

It _has _to be a sign, frankly, because Gabriel very much wants to live.

El is witty and funny and plainly beautiful, and best of all she is _interested in him. _Gabriel can't remember speaking so long with one person. Brian becomes a distant memory in the sheer euphoria of her presence, and the watches start to respond to his touch again, jolting warmly to life and revealing their secrets with practiced ease. El is _perfectperfectperfect _as his old clock-watch, and life is good.

* * *

When Gabriel was eight, he thought that he had made his first good friend. And he was wrong.

He spent most of every school day whispering with Michael in the back of the classroom. He never saw Michael outside of school, but he never saw _anyone _outside of school, so that was alright. What was not alright was the conversation he overhead when he arrived early one morning.

"Why do you have to hang out with that quiet kid all the time?" One of Michael's other friends sighed, his voice high and whiny as only a petulant child's can be. "You don't even _like _him."

"But he helps me with my work," Michael protested. "Mom and Dad said they'll get me the new game if I get all A's, okay? It's not like he's hanging around our houses, be nice."

Oh.

Well.

That explained a few things.

And Gabriel... had said nothing. What could he say? He distanced himself subtly from Michael, and every time he was approached thereafter a little voice whispered, _they don't mean it, they're lying lying lying, they hate you secretly they're laughing at you mocking you why would they not patheticpatheticpathetic - _

Well. At least he had his mother.

* * *

El brings over another man, a goth who stares at Gabriel timidly from the doorway. At first Gabriel is just unpleasantly surprised. He's not comfortable with company, El being the exception, but he can make concessions for her friends, he supposes, except -

"Don't be mad," she says.

His name is Trevor Zeitlan, and he's... special.

More special than Gabriel, if El's delighted exclamations mean anything. So the guy shatters a few glasses, so what? Gabriel can _move things with his mind. _That's much better than Trevor's trick, but El ignores him, ignores him, and coos, "Oh, how _special," _and something snaps.

He throws Trevor against the wall, _with his mind, _primarily to make a point. He is angry, _jealous, _but he doesn't mean to kill the man. Probably.

And then El attacks him... with lightning.

Blue lightning, crackling like the wisps of light he had seen the first day they'd met, and he knows, suddenly and intrinsically, that he has been betrayed. She was using him all along, manipulating them. Nothing is real. He is still alone, and still just Gabriel.

She flees from him in fear. Why not? And why is he not good enough alone, if she was searching out 'special' people? Just a tool. A weapon, maybe.

So maybe, he decides, staring at the bloody brain-bits that cover his hand an hour later, maybe can be forgiven for killing. A weapon only has one use, after all, and it is clear that this is all Gabriel will really amount to, the only way he will get anything, gain anything, really stand out: murder.

* * *

El is gone. Gabriel dumps the new body, immediately, feeling just numb. And then he seeks out Chandra Suresh.

He doesn't know why, really, but it eases something dark and hungry inside him to see the doctor's pure and unfettered _delight _over his telekinesis. But Suresh has a request.

He wants Gabriel to come with him to find _more _special people. He will be a tool again.

Gabriel needs to think about the offer, and he thinks by wandering around the city aimlessly. When he grows hungry, he ambles into a Chinese restaurant, absently.

It's a strange idea that comes to him, but less so when one considers his thoughts are whirling around telepathy and clairvoyance and fate. He grasps a fortune cookie, weighing the dark lust within him and the moral imperative for suicide, and decides that he will follow the lead of whatever message he receives.

The crack of the bland cookie is loud as a gunshot, and he pulls out the roll of paper inside with slow fingers.

"Do what you want," he reads, "when you want, and you will be rewarded."

The dark _want_ pulls through his veins. And Gabriel lowers his head and begins to laugh.

He attracts stares. It doesn't matter. He takes the fortune and sticks it in his pocket, smiling and twitching and hating himself for his excitement.

He will go to Suresh. Accompany him. And he will take everything he wants from all the 'specials' he finds. Their powers will be his reward, and he will be the best of them all.

His wrist-watches _tick, tick, ticks _against his arm, and he glances down at the empty, shining Sylar watch, which seems now to be bright and gleaming in the red restaurant light.

"Sylar," he muses aloud. "It has a ring to it."

* * *

**(Reviews are loooove).**


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